12 Obituary— Henry Francis Blanford. 
or four years in examining the Cretaceous beds near Trichinopoly 
and Pondicherry, some fossils from which, described by Prot ie 
Forbes and Sir P. Egerton, had attracted much attention in Hurope. 
The stratigraphical work on the Indian Cretaceous beds was mainly 
palzontological, but the classification established by Mr. Blanford 
was fully confirmed by Dr. F. Stoliczka’s well-known description of 
the fauna. A commencement of this description was made by Mr. 
Blanford himself, who published an account of the Nautilide and 
Belemnitide in the “ Palzeontologia Indica” before he left the Survey 
in 1862. The geology of the area was described in a report pub- 
lished in the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the Geological Survey 
of India. An account of the geology of the Nilghiri Hills in the 
first volume of the same Memoir was the only other report on the 
Madras Presidency by Mr. Blanford published: by the Survey. 
The causes of Mr. Blanford’s retirement from the Survey were 
partly injury to his health caused by exposure to the climate, partly 
strained personal relations with the Superintendent of the Survey, 
the late Dr. T. Oldham. After staying for a short time in Europe 
and recovering his health Mr. Blanford was appointed to the Science 
Professorship at the Presidency College, Calcutta, and was from 
1864 to 1872 on the staff of the Bengal Hducational Department. 
He became in 1864 one of the Hon. Secretaries of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal, and about this time took up the subject of Indian 
Meteorology, at first in connection with cyclonic storms, of which 
a very severe one visited Calcutta in 1864. He was for some years a 
member of a Meteorological Committee appointed by the Government, 
but in 1867 he became Meteorological Reporter to the Government of 
Bengal, and finally in 1874, a new department having been formed 
by the Government of India, he was placed at the head. This post 
of Meteorological Reporter to the Government of India he held 
until his retirement from Indian service in 1888. After his retire- 
ment he resided at Folkestone until his death on January 23rd of the 
present year. 
Besides a number of important reports and works on Meteorology, 
Mr. Blanford was author of several papers on fossil and recent 
Mollusca, and of two treatises on the geography of India. One of 
these has been used for many years as a text-book by schools and 
colleges in India; the other is a recent publication and forms one of 
Macmillan’s geographical series, published under the editorship of 
Sir A. Geikie. Another recent publication of Mr. Blanford’s is “ A 
Practical Guide to the Climates and Weather of India, Ceylon, and 
Burma, and the Storms of Indian Seas.” He also wrote, in con- 
junction with the late Mr. J. W. Salter, the Paleontology of Nitti. 
His only contribution to the Quarterly Journal of the Geological 
Society was an important paper published in 1875 on “The Age and 
Correlation of the Plant-bearing Series of India and the former 
existence of an Indo-Oceanic Continent.” 
Mr. H. F. Blanford became a Fellow of the Geological Society in 
1862 and of the Royal Society in 1880. He was President of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1884-85. 
